"The New Shadow"

How my enduring obsession with J. R. R. Tolkien's unfinished Middle-earth novel has inspired me to start writing my own fantasy tales.

Photo by Rosie Sun on Unsplash

An unexpected sequel…

For many years I have had a fascination—perhaps bordering on obsession—with J.R.R. Tolkien’s abandoned sequel to The Lord of the Rings. This unfinished tale—really no more than a fragment of a chapter—was published posthumously by Tolkien’s son Christopher in The History of Middle-earth, Vol. 12: The Peoples of Middle Earth.

I was thirteen years old when I discovered The Lord of the Rings. Up until that time I had read very little fantasy except The Chronicles of Narnia By C.S. Lewis and the first Harry Potter book. But Middle-earth captured my heart and my imagination in a way that no fantasy world has before or since. When I finished reading the great “trilogy” (LotR is really a single giant novel in three parts), I didn’t want the adventure to end. A smoldering fire was lit in my soul—the desire to write an epic fantasy saga of my very own.

Perhaps this is why Tolkien’s neglected sequel has such a hold on me. When I reach the conclusion of a captivating novel or film or television series, my natural response is to ask the question: What happens next? I guess my mind and my imagination are just wired that way.

The shadow lengthens…

As I’ve written at length elsewhere, “The New Shadow” takes place in the Fourth Age, about a century after the Fall of Sauron and the departure of Frodo Baggins and the Ringbearers to Valinor. King Aragorn’s son Eldarion sits on the throne of the Reunited Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor, while a growing shadow of discontent broods over the land.

The emerging threat is perceived by Borlas, the younger son of Beregond (a loyal Gondorian soldier who, sadly, was not included in Peter Jackson’s iconic film adaptations). “The New Shadow” ends on a tantalizing cliffhanger, leaving the reader with far more questions than answers. Borlas returns to his home, but finds it dark and deathly silent:

[Borlas] entered, wondering a little. He called but there was no answer. He halted in the narrow passage that ran through the house, and it seemed that he was wrapped in a blackness: not a glimmer of twilight of the world outside remained there. Suddenly he smelt it, or so it seemed, though it came as it were from within outwards to the sense: he smelt the old Evil and knew it for what it was.

And there we are left to wonder: What was the evil Borlas sensed? The return of Sauron? Surely not. What then? I don’t think Tolkien himself knew for certain, which may be why he decided to abandon this promising manuscript. In a letter written in 1964, he dismissed the sequel as “a thriller” that was “not worth doing.” His son Christopher wasn’t so sure, writing in The Peoples of Middle-earth: “It would nonetheless have been a very remarkable ‘thriller’ and one may well view its early abandonment with regret.” I certainly do.

Of course, I can’t help but imagine possible scenarios for how “The New Shadow” would have played out as a complete novel. You could say that Tolkien’s Middle-earth sequel has cast its own long shadow over my creative efforts during the last few years. Let me back up a little and explain.

When all other lights go out…

As I mentioned at the start of this reflection, I’ve wanted to write my own fantasy series ever since I first read The Lord of the Rings. My iterative process of brainstorming, worldbuilding, and outlining has been filling up notebooks and Microsoft Word documents for well over two decades.

Certainly, there were also seasons when, in my quixotic ambition to come up with something “original” that still felt distinctly Tolkienian, I threw up my hands in near-despair and gave up on my ambition for a time.

When I discovered “The New Shadow,” my ideas seemed to crystalize into something I could work with. I started to ask myself questions based on the premise that Tolkien had set up in his “fantasy thriller”—What kind of credible threat would exist in a world where the Dark Lord has already been defeated? Aragorn and his companions won the war, but it’s the responsibility of his untried son to win the peace. Is he up to the task?

I became fascinated with the question of what it would be like to be the son and heir of a legendary Hero-King like Aragorn. Imagine the weight of expectation and responsibility that would rest on that young man’s shoulders! I felt drawn to explore this character and the kind of world he would inherit after the victorious conquest over the forces of evil.

And yet, the dark and depressingly sinister tone of “The New Shadow” does not inspire me. It’s not even very compatible with my own taste in epic fantasy. I enjoy stories filled with hope and wonder and heroic quests. Darkness and peril, of course, come with the territory. But I firmly believe that fantasy loses its way when it becomes so focused on the darkness that it forgets the Light that existed before the world was made.

Sam Gamgee has a similar moment of revelation in the pages of The Return of the King:

For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

Helping to spread light in the world is what I feel called to do as a writer. And there is perhaps no genre more suited to this purpose than epic fantasy. So, where to start?

The road goes ever on…

Fear and self-doubt can kill a book before it ever has the chance to enter the world. For too long, I’ve let these anxieties hold me back. Maybe my ideas for a fantasy adventure story aren’t the most original. But I like elves wandering in the twilight and dwarves laboring at the forge and cities of shining stone and cavernous halls beneath the mountains and quiet villages nestled among the gently rolling hills and abandoned towers hiding forgotten secrets and endless forests of mighty trees and lonely roads that lead to dragons’ lairs and who knows what else besides.

These things are why I fell in love with fantasy genre when I was an awkward teenager looking for hope in a frightening world and found it in the dogeared pages of a paperback copy of The Fellowship of the Ring.

And so, the road of life goes on. This summer I will have plenty of time to write. Why shouldn’t I use that time to begin writing the fantasy story I’ve always dreamed about but have (up until now) been too afraid to put to paper? I’m prepared to let the adventure of writing this tale surprise me. After all, as Bilbo Baggins once said to his favorite nephew:

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

Until next time, farewell. And remember the words of Faramir of Gondor—“The Sun will soon rise above the shadow.”